I've been getting a new wave of spam comments recently on AO3 that are easy for me to spot because they are responding to my fandom stats meta as if it were fiction:
[redacted]* left the following comment on [Fandom stats] Ted Lasso S3 on AO3: fandom response to Season 3:
I love how you explored the unexplored aspects of the original story. It adds a whole new layer of depth.
[redacted]* left the following comment on [Fandom stats tutorial] How to gather fandom data & do fandom stats:
Your fanfic is an emotional rollercoaster. I laughed, I cried, and I couldn't get enough. Fantastic work!
[redacted]* left the following comment on [Fandom stats tutorial] How to gather fandom data & do fandom stats:
Your writing has a lyrical quality to it. The prose is poetic, and it added an extra layer of beauty to the story.
[redacted]* left the following comment on [Fandom stats tutorial] How to gather fandom data & do fandom stats:
I can't get enough of your writing. It's addictive.
I believe I've only been getting these on my most recently updated three works (and mostly on the oldest of those three, which is also the most popular, the only WIP, and the only one with multiple chapters). But it's also possible I got some comments on older works that were fiction, and I didn't recognize them as spam.
Has anyone else been noticing a similar influx?
*Edit to add: redacted because at least some of the names the bots are using are real usernames, appropriated for spam. (But if the name in a comment is not linked, it's not the actual user leaving the comment.) If you see such comments yourself, don't blame the real users for the spam bots' actions!
